


Rhapsody in Kaiju Blue

by liptonrm



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Backstory, Dreams, Drift Bond, F/M, Family, Gen, Horror, Jaegers, Kwoon, Pre-Movie, Rule 63, Siblings, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Tumblr: jaegercon, Urban Legends, Vignette, 怪獣 | Kaiju (Pacific Rim) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:32:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liptonrm/pseuds/liptonrm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments from the apocalypse. </p><p>Jaegercon 2013 bingo fills. One fill per chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jaeger Legends

**Author's Note:**

> The following are Jaegercon 2013 bingo fills, one fill per chapter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They whispered the stories around the shatterdome, tales of hauntings, of missing tools and missing techs, people driven away by what they saw deep in the beating of a jaeger's heart._

They whispered the stories around the shatterdome, tales of hauntings, of missing tools and missing techs, people driven away by what they saw deep in the beating of a jaeger's heart. Everyone knew that jaegers twitched while their pilots slept, breathed and lived through the depths of the night. But some connections went deeper than dreams, than nightmares, than the drift itself.

The stories were passed around in the hallways and cafeterias, behind closed doors and cupped hands. They told of Rio Oro, the hefty Chilean Mark II that had continued fighting after his pilots died, killed his third kaiju and sunk below the waves. How in Hong Kong, at the end of days, the techs learned the hard way that you didn't touch Cherno Alpha without a Kaidonovsky nearby, that there were worse things than shocked fingers and burned faces, that repairs unaccompanied by the right music might as well not have happened at all.

They said that Coyote Tango never moved again after Tokyo, her heart empty with her pilots incapacitated and gone. They said that Striker Eureka triggered the bomb himself, milliseconds before Chuck Hansen flipped the switch, eager to finish the job.

And then there was Gipsy Danger who carried her pilot home when he couldn't go another step, who died and then rose again, stronger and sleeker and reformed, who never would have fought again without Mako Mori, never walked without Raleigh Beckett. That Gipsy Danger stood beyond the Breach, sentinel against the kaiju and their masters. She waited there to one day rise again.


	2. The Kwoon (Mako Mori/Raleigh Beckett [M])

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They found each other in the Kwoon._

They found each other in the Kwoon. It was dark and late and their war was over. The base was nearly empty and they floated around it like ghosts, uncertain of the brave new world whose price had been the people they loved.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t have to. Everything they could have to say had already been said. Even days later they were still lost in the Drift.

They blinked and Raleigh was pressed back against the wall, his hands wrapped around Mako’s hips. She surged up and pinned him, hands on shoulders, lips on lips, a kiss that was a battle that she would win.

She always won, even when winning meant losing everything else.

She didn’t hold back because she knew that he understood what it was like to win the battle and lose your entire world. He could take it, take everything she was, everything she had to give, every blow that she could strike. He wouldn’t break and he wouldn’t let her fall.

They blinked again and they were naked, clothes a dark heap in the dim, empty room. Raleigh laid sprawled across the padding, chest heaving, coated in sweat. He pulled Mako down on top of him, hands gentle, both remembering that it wasn’t a war, it was a dance, it was them, Mako and Raleigh, and their war had never been with each other.

She reached down and grasped his cock where it lay leaking between them. Her grip was soft but firm, the perfect pressure because she knew him, all of him. He moaned and arched, writhing as he came undone.

She shifted and rose, using her grip to guide herself down around him. She sunk and he whined, losing himself in her, in the two of them together. Their connection snapped into place and they were deep inside of each other, feeling what the other felt, knowing what the other knew. Raleigh felt full to bursting, an intrusion that wasn’t an invasion but shivery pleasure and joy; Mako knew the need to take, to give, to drive forward again and again until the ledge came and she could fly.

They rose and fell together, one body, one mind, connected even in their dreams.

It was Raleigh’s voice that bounced off of the walls in pleas and curses, his shout that echoed around them as they came down, but the same joy and desperation were written across Mako’s face, sculpted into the lines of her body. They had each other and in that brief glowing moment they didn’t need anyone else.

They laid, wrapped around each other, their beating hearts a lifeline and lullaby. They stayed there where there was no future or past or present, nothing to celebrate or mourn, only Raleigh and Mako and what they had done together.

It hadn’t been farewell. Rangers never said goodbye.


	3. Dreams (Newton Geiszler)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Dreams of fire and darkness and death haunt Newt's nights._

Dreams of fire and darkness and death haunt Newt's nights. He closes his eyes to sleep and he sees through kaiju eyes. His rational mind knows that the breach is closed, the pathway shut, that other dimension severed from their own. But in sleep it's there, searing across his flesh, icy cold tentacles rifling through his memories like cards in a deck. The aliens know him and he knows them, knows that there's no escape.

Newt is spread out, examined, under the Precursor's heavy gaze. They haven't forgotten him.

Some days the memories, the dreams, follow him into the day. Malevolent eyes follow him as he walks, eats, plays his music and works his magic. The weight is heavy on the back of his neck, the gaze alien and patient, infinitely patient. They wait and they watch and when the time comes they will return.

Newt tells himself that it's paranoia, brain damage, neurosis. He's fucked himself up, connected himself bare to an alien mind using slapdash tech. He tells himself not to be afraid.

But night comes and they wait there, behind his eyes, gazing from the shadows. They watch and they wait and they never forget.


	4. Family (Mako Mori & Stacker Pentecost pre-movie)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They drove for an hour outside of the city, searching for a lonely corner of the river, a space just for them._

They drove for an hour outside of the city, searching for a lonely corner of the river, a space just for them. The drive was quiet, Mako a silent figure in the seat to Stacker's left. She stared out the window at the passing countryside and he let her be. For months she had been under his car and he'd finally started to learn when to pry and when to let her be. He knew too well that sometimes silence was the only balm.

He parked by the side of the dirt road and they hiked a meter or more through brush and around thick gum tree trunks until the river flowed in front of them, gray water reflecting the sky above. Dusk gathered around them as they listened to the moving water and the birds cawing in the trees, both hearing the whispers of the ghosts that drifted around them.

The sun fell and he handed her a lantern, specially made for this day, and lit his own. They knelt down and set their lights onto the river. They watched, knees damp, as the water carried the lanterns away, flickering brightness in the growing dark.

Memories hung thick around them; the kindness of a mother's smile, the steel-forged strength of a father's hug, the fierce laughter of a sister's eyes. They remembered the people they had lost, the lives the kaiju had ripped away.

But through all of the pain, all of the sacrifice and the struggle, they still soldiered on. And, in spite of it all, they had found each other. Together they would finish what the kaiju had started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a headcanon that they spend some post-adoption R&R in Australia, hence the gum trees.


	5. Jaeger Crew (OFC pre-movie)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“If you listen close,” Maira's first PPDC officer, brash and American, had told her, “every jaeger has a story to tell.”_

“If you listen close,” Maira's first PPDC officer, brash and American, had told her, “every jaeger has a story to tell.” He had been wrong about a great many things—the war's duration, the coffee in the mess, her desire to share his bed—but about the jaegers he had been absolutely right. In order to repair a jaeger she first had to learn how to speak to them.

Her earliest memories were lodged in her papi's shop, watching him bang away at old tractors and _turista_ 's giant plastic cars, listening to him mutter and curse. “ _No le digas a tú mami, mija_ ,” he would say after a particularly colorful curse flew through the air, a secret between the two of them. He taught her engines and circuits and the joy that came puzzling out a machine's deepest secrets. He taught her how to bring the dead back to life.

Later, much later, after kaiju blue stained the beaches and her papi was buried under the waves, she brought what he had taught her to the greatest machines of all. She discovered each jaeger's language, the secret sound that beat in their hearts, their voices and rhythms. She learned how to recognize their screams and repair their deepest wounds. They were her monsters and she loved them all.

Sometimes, on quiet nights, when the shatterdome was dark and the oceans were silent, no kaiju in sight, she would stand and watch her jaegers dream. Some nights she would dream with them.


	6. Dog Tags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Dog tags hang, silent, down the main corridor of every shatterdome._

Dog tags hang, silent, down the main corridor of every shatterdome. No one knows how the tradition started but everyone knows it's there, a silent memorial to the fallen.

There's no time for ceremonies in their world, every second a desperate race to fight the kaiju back, to escape extinction. But every time a jaeger falls the pilots dog tags find their way to the wall, battered or newly minted. Every time a crew member burns alive or a scientist takes too many risks, their dog tags hang on the wall. Every soldier who finds his or her own way out, the war's toll too heavy to bear, is remembered there.

This is their memorial, this is their tomb. Because the dead should never be forgotten.


	7. Public Shelters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _[P]eople tell horror stories about the shelters._

_The Michigan Daily  
March 12, 2020  
Excerpt from an Op-Ed by J.M. Kuhn_

[P]eople tell horror stories about the shelters. And there are plenty of horrors to tell: the panicked brawl that turned into a riot that burned half of Portland, Oregon; the floating gambling dens in Chile where you could lose a finger or worse; the child snatchers in Australia where you'd better hold onto your babies of lose them forever. Don't keep money in your pockets, don't make eye contact, don't talk, don't breathe.

But the thing the news reporters and tabloid muckrakers forget is that we are more than our worst demons; that for every nightmare there's a moment of joy. The sensationalists and the talking heads won't tell you about the lost girl found in Hong Kong, dug out of rubble by an entire shelter that came to her parents' aid. You'll never hear about all of the babies born, in silence and screams, during kaiju attacks, a human struggle to echo the war raging overhead. And if you're very lucky you might one day witness the wedding of shelter sweethearts, people who turned terror into delight.

The monsters kneel at our doorstep, scream in our nights. But it's not the demons we all keep, leashed in our souls, that will deliver us from the dark. Horrors surround us but we stand together and remind ourselves why we deserve to be saved.


	8. Coffee (Yancy and Raleigh Beckett)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _People used to joke that Yancy Becket only joined the Corps for the coffee._

People used to joke that Yancy Becket only joined the Corps for the coffee. He'd laugh right along with them as he sucked down his third cup of joe, because if killing kaiju was the PPDC's main attraction, coffee was one hell of a fringe benefit. Out in the civilian world coffee, real coffee, was a precious commodity. Even at the jaeger program's ass-kicking height, coffee shipments hadn't been a priority; oil and rubber and stupid little electronic toys from China got through, but real, rich coffee was a luxury that was just too damn expensive to insure.

But it was the PPDC's life blood. There wasn't a tech in the LOCCENT or a scientist down in the lab who didn't pump it straight into their arteries. Coffee kept them moving, kept the jaeger's running and the kaiju dying. The Corps needed coffee like regular people needed to breathe.

Most, if not all, of the rangers used it to jolt them from one mission to the next, but no one depended on it like Yancy. He could hardly drag himself out of bed if Raleigh wasn't there holding a mug under his nose. And woe unto any asshole who tried to talk to him before his second mug of the day. No one begrudged Yancy his morning cup and if they had Yancy wouldn't have given a crap. He killed kaiju and there were much worse vices a ranger could have.

During his time on the wall Raleigh never drank a cup. It wasn't exactly available for a working stiff like him, not on the stingy ration cards they doled out, but he wouldn't have touched it if he could. He'd smelled it once, wafting out of some shuttered store front in Sitka, and damn near lost his dinner in the street. Suddenly he was there again, strapped into a jaeger, his jaeger, feeling his brother ripped out of his brain; panic and terror and then emptiness where the only person in his life who had meant a damn used to be. He'd never go back there again.

His first morning in Hong Kong he picked up a mug on instinct, falling back into the routine like he'd never left. He took a sip, strong and black, the way Yancy used to drink it, and for a second he had his brother sitting next to him, his missing limb grown back. The taste burst over his tongue and he smiled, small and private, the kind of smile Yancy used to make on the mornings when the brew was particularly good. In that moment they were together again, in that moment they were both happy.


	9. Anteverse (Hermann Gottlieb & Newton Geiszler)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hermann Gottlieb saw the kaiju's universe long before that fateful day when he drifted with Newton Geizsler._

Hermann Gottlieb saw the kaiju's universe long before that fateful day when he drifted with Newton Geizsler. He glimpsed it first in numbers printed behind his eyelids, the elegance of quantum mechanics a more sure map than any cartographer could create. In that universe, in its very existence, was the one sure thing that made the theoretical practical. It answered all of the questions and raised a multitude of glorious new ones.

Perhaps, Hermann could admit in the stillness of his own mind, he was as much a kaiju groupie as his erstwhile lab mate. But Newt didn't need to know. No one needed to know. There was more to life than being a rock star.

It was his damnable curiosity to see what had only been imagined, that whispered in his mind, as they readied the drift. Oh, it hadn't been his reason for volunteering, but now that he was here, right on the edge, it whispered to him, giddy, of what this could mean, what he could possibly see. He held his breath, chest a riot of emotion, as Newt punched them in.

It was horrible. No, worse, it was obscene. Newt's mind was as expected, loud and brash and familiar. But the kaiju's mind was a screaming nerve. It was to much, too alien, for Hermann to endure. He followed as Newt dove, saw what Newt saw, understood the Breach's simple fail safe, all through eyes that suddenly understood what Dante had seen in Hell.

And then that thing, the kaiju's master, turned its gaze upon them and Herman broke before Lucifer no longer frozen in the ice. He fled, pulling Newt behind him, away from that place, from that ravenous gaze. He cut the connection before he shattered against it.

“Not really what you'd thought it would be,” Newt said, unexpected empathy in his eyes. He had felt, first hand, Hermann's pure vision splinter around the ugly reality, the crystal crunching beneath their feet.

Hermann swallowed down bile and did not respond. There was no need and no time. They had to destroy the Breach. It was the only way.


	10. Uniforms (Rule 63!Chuck Hansen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The uniform felt right._

The uniform felt right. Fourteen years old and Chuck Hansen had never wanted anything else, just the feel of rubber and circuitry tight around her, the creak of stiff, powerful gloves on her hands. Her first time in a sim and she was ready.

The other academy students expected her to fail, to wash out. They expected the sim to scare the shit out of her, that she'd come out screaming and calling for her daddy. She didn't care. They didn't matter, didn't know what it was like to be out there, to have nothing left. Even her dad was just humoring her, she was sure. She saw the way he looked at her, the heaviness and the confusion. She saw the way he wished that Mom had been the one who survived. Most days Chuck wished that too.

But he'd pulled the strings, gotten her into the Academy over pretty much everyone else's objections. Except the Marshall had understood, the Marshall got it. Sometimes crying wasn't enough and growing up didn't help. Sometimes you had to learn how to fight back.

What the Corps wanted the Corps got, even if it was teenage girls with chips on their shoulders and everything to prove.

Chuck deserved to be there, belonged there, could kick the asses of any of the assholes who hadn't seen the oceans turn blue or the blast of a nuclear bomb reflected in their father's eyes.

She rolled her shoulders, felt the tight embrace of her pilot suit. She'd show them all what she could do.


End file.
